Packers Play Like the ‘60s in 21-17 Upset Win Over 49ers : Green Bay: Majkowski carries out Infante’s game plan to trim San Francisco’s lead over Rams to two games.

The biggest play of the game didn’t count. When the San Francisco 49ers ran back an interception 94 yards for what appeared to be the winning touchdown in the fourth quarter, they were offside.

But otherwise, league-leading San Francisco was outplayed Sunday by the Green Bay Packers, who are obviously on their way up in pro football with, perhaps, another Vince Lombardi and another Bart Starr.

Their Lombardi type is second-year Coach Lindy Infante, who wrote a splendid game plan and made the decisive calls on a warm, windless afternoon in Candlestick Park.

The Starr type is Don Majkowski, the Packers’ third-year quarterback from Virginia, who threw the passes and scored the touchdowns that gave the 49ers their second loss of the season, 21-17.

The crowd of 62,219, the 49ers’ sixth largest in this earthquake-proof stadium, sat around to see if 49er quarterback Joe Montana would make another flashy, game-saving comeback at the end. And he had a chance.

But the obviously flat 49ers, who didn’t take Green Bay as seriously as they should have if they really wanted a 15-1 season, couldn’t protect him against the Packer defense when it counted.

With not quite two minutes left, Montana, who was sacked five times, often mauled, and once knocked out of the game, led the 49ers for the last time to the Packer 32-yard line. On fourth down, he missed on a hurried throw to his triple-covered flanker, Jerry Rice.

The 49ers (9-2) are just two games up on the surging Rams in the NFC West. The Packers (6-5) climbed into playoff contention, only one game back of the Chicago Bears, who are a game back of the Minnesota Vikings in the NFC Central.

Against a 49er defense that didn’t seem very sound, Green Bay broke a 14-14 halftime tie with a 73-yard drive. It ended in the fourth minute of the fourth quarter with an eight-yard run on a quarterback draw play by Majkowski (the J is silent).

The Packers under Infante are a tricky team. They scored their first touchdown on a two-yard rollout by Majkowski, who skipped in as the 49ers flattened the running back they expected up the middle.

Asked if he sent these plays into his quarterback, Infante said: “I call them all, the bad plays and the good plays.”

Said San Francisco linebacker Michael Walter: “We just self-destructed today.”

And there was a lot of truth in that. On Green Bay’s winning drive, for example, penalties against the 49ers cost them 45 of the Packers’ 73 yards.

Moreover, it was in the midst of that drive that 49er safety Chet Brooks intercepted Majkowski’s pass and raced 94 yards to the touchdown that would have given the 49ers the lead for the first time in this game, 21-14, if 49er defensive end Daniel Stubbs hadn’t lined up offside.

“I called that play, too,” Infante said. “We were trying to throw the ball away.”

He is a poised leader who wants to restore the old glory of the Packers, when they had Lombardi in the 1960s. And in this game, at least, Infante showed enough offense to do it, a wide-open offense that put the 49ers behind three times as Majkowski completed 18 of 30 passes for 153 yards.

But if the 49ers needed this one to make the Super Bowl, they probably wouldn’t have fallen over themselves so often. Most of their 10 penalties were for jumping offside or for unnecessary interference. They also turned the ball over four times--once on Montana’s first interception in 150 throws.

The only 49er who seemed to be emotionally charged up was linebacker Matt Millen, the former Raider, who once jarred a screen pass receiver for a three-yard loss, who later recovered a fumble that gave the 49ers a scoring chance they blew, and who kept leading the cheers on the sideline.

In this game, the 49ers’ didn’t need cheerleaders, they needed someone to block for Montana.